Can You Believe Your Eyes? Not always..

November 10, 2011

4 minute read

I get all sorts of weird and wonderful emails popping up in my inbox, but this week I got a couple that were so strange that I wanted to investigate a bit further. They were both concerning a feature on an on-line newspaper site about some claims a cream is making. Although it is placed in the women’s section, it is written by a staff reporter and not a beauty writer. Instead of the usual ‘I tried this cream and it is awful’ sort of comment, this time the observation was that the case-study featured was not all it seemed. In the case-study (a case-study being an independent person who can vouch or attest to a treatment working (or not) because they have tried it themselves), the user claims the cream is marvellous, really worked for her etc, but both emails I received said the case-study is not a random customer of the brand, but actually a PR for the brand. Her name is changed, where she lives is changed and oddly, so is her age. And, stranger still, in the un-moderated comment section of the piece on the website, there are two comments (anon) that say the same thing; that she is using a pseudonym and works for the brand. A chance meeting with a former employer of the case-study just sealed it really.

Bearing in mind that bloggers bust a gut to put out honest and open reviews of products, I really mind that a brand and agency has used someone affiliated closely with both to ‘sell’ the product as something that works and in a seemingly honest personal testimonial. And, if something like this comes up, you can’t un-know it.. once you know, you know. I checked, and double checked because the implications of making a mistake are gruesome. So, I phoned the newspaper to say that the person who is telling millions of readers that this cream is the most amazing thing ever is not actually who she says she is, because the consequence of the case-study testimonial is that lots of women will read and believe and then rush out to buy the product, when in fact, it may not be quite the miracle it seems. That just doesn’t seem fair to me.

I am keeping every single identifiable name out of this feature; it isn’t a vindictive rant and for the sake of a stupid beauty cream, I do not want to see heads roll and keeping things in perspective, it’s a cream not a new kidney. But, as you’ll see the whole case-study issue in newspapers is a very murky one. PRs are under constant pressure to give case-studies, and they are often very, very difficult to find. It is one thing to have your acne or whatever completely cleared by a product, but another entirely to go in print saying it. And many ‘real’ people are reluctant to do so. On one newspaper I worked for, I had to do a feature on people who spent a lot on make-up; I found one girl who genuinely spent £16,000 a year on the stuff, but the editor decided it wasn’t enough to impress readers, so I had to fluff it and say she spent £20,000. To be honest, what’s the difference, when it comes to that amount, but I was never comfortable with the fact that we’d randomly added £4,000. If I hadn’t changed it, the feature would have been dropped and I wouldn’t have been paid, but the wider consequence would have been that I would then have found it difficult to get more work from said paper and been labelled ‘diffcult’.

Back to the case-study. I spoke to the PR company concerned who denied flat out that it was a former or current employee and I suddenly started to doubt the original sources. And then, someone sent me her face-book page with her real name and age, listed as a beauty PR and not the spurious job title she’d been given for the feature. I’ve shown it to several people, because I still had just a shred of doubt and not quite believing my own eyes, and they all, with no exception, say, it’s the same person. The journalist so far won’t look at the face-book page although I have forwarded it and accepted the PR agency’s denial. However, she did admit that the interview was a strange one, with the case-study one of the most enthusiastic she has come across.

So, why bother to tell this at all? I believe that women spend millions overall on products that are full of promise but rarely deliver, and I’m bloody horrified that they’re being encouraged by the press to spend even more spurred on by a false testimonial. It’s just not on. None of this is okay, and it drags the whole industry into disgrace. Not only is it conning readers, mainly female, but also undoes all the hard work that many PRs put into getting solid and genuine case-studies. At the very least, the feature should come down from the website in a damage limitation exercise: I know the case-study isn’t real, but nobody else does.There is no further to go with this without sounding demented and vindictive, so I have to leave it. But, grrr.

*all products are sent to me as samples from brands and agencies unless otherwise stated. Affiliate links may be used. Posts are not affiliate driven.

Comment by Facebook

14 comments

What can I say? Yet again this post shows that your are Queen Bee when it comes to Beauty Blogging – always looking for the story behind the product, always on the side of the consumer and the beauty addict. Keep up the good work!

I think thats why blogging has taken off in such a big way, the very vast majority of bloggers give a genuine review, of course what works for one person may not for another, but at least it’s not made up by that particular individual. I never believe any hype. I remember a certain comapny bought out a cream and they were like ooh it works for 1 in 5 people, all I could think of was the 4 out fo 5 people it didn’t work for!!

Brilliant post! I saw the “article” in the ummm daily unnamed publication and the comments regarding the PR person as well. You’ve taken it much further, but are you really surprised at the way they are behaving? I noted (and you know for sure) that that particular company’s parent company is known to send their lawyers in should anyone accuse them of exaggerating the efficacy of their products – which claim to do the impossible.

Good afternoon BBBI never buy beauty products reccomended by magazines or newspapersthey say every product is amazingI have made many expensive mistakesSo I listen to someone who tells you when something works or notin an honest nonsense way so a big thankyou BBBjoy x

I have absolutely no idea what article this is referring to, or which product, but it is pretty shocking behaviour imo!

People trust these stats when they read them, it’s hard not to most of the time.

This potentially leads them to make not only financial outlays on products linked to these case studies, but also emotional ones – since they/we believe that this could really help us with whatever problem it is that has been really getting us down!

I know of a trial company, in fact I am a member of one where they send out products (mostly not identifiable by any branding either) for a certain amount of their members to try out, with a questionnaire following the trial.

I think that’s why I have always had a bit of faith in case study statistics (to some degree – as I’m sure some people just put as much thought into it as others), as I’ve been part of them and had always assumed that these had to be fully transparent and truthful – especially where advertising standards were concerned.

I have a feeling I may know what you’re referring to and just laughed when I saw the article online. The worst part were women in the comment section saying they were eager to purchase the product on the back of the false claims.

This piece further enhances the growing divide between blogging and journalism. Beauty Bloggers now (heralded by Miss Jane Cunningham) absolutely own the rights to the truer meaning of what it means to be a true “reporter” or “journalist” because they tell the truth and are genuinely unbiased. Its interesting that magazines and papers want a piece of what bloggers do by partnering with them. But in essence its completely futile when the two camps couldn’t be further apart. Until the publications get behind the brands in a genuine way and their hands aren’t forced by editor’s and advertisers – this kind of rubbish will continue. Its sad, but the tide is turning.

Interesting post but unfortunately not surprising as I have just finished reading Flat Earth News by Nick Davies, which talks a lot about the blurred line between journalism and PR. Recommended if you want to learn more. I now question a lot of what I read in newspapers, magazines and on the web, which is no bad thing! Identifying what is fact and what is advertising is very difficult so great you got to the bottom of this one.

Ahhh, it was always thus. Back in the old days I worked in the City as an industry analyst and often read news stories I actually knew something about and thought “that is just totally wrong.” Meanwhile you’d learn something truly useful at a conference and wonder why the mainstream media didn’t cover it at all.